The narrator in LeGuin’s “The Question of Sex” might reveal just as much about herself as she does about the subjects of her anthropological inquiry. What does she rely on to anchor her understanding of the universe, herself, and others? How does she try to cope with understanding people alien to her? Do you think she has good or bad strategies for that? Don’t just generalize. Explain how a particular moment in the text helped you come to your understanding of the character.
6 thoughts on “LeGuin–Group 4”
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One thing that hasn’t been totally touched upon is the verbiage itself–the prison of language that the narrator is trapped in when attempting to describe these alien life forms. It is a deeply human frustration–one that is totally foreseeable, given these farfetched circumstances, as a credible reaction our culture would exhibit. We veil our lack of comprehension, and any fear that it inspires, with the crutch of complex/scientific verbosity–a choice of words used to convince ourselves, if not others, that we have our hand on the ball. The narrator adopts a clinical, intellectually elitist vocabulary to describe these fundamentally different lifeforms (somewhat comparable to our discussion on doctors and their medical language in Psycho last Friday). Thus, there is something distinctly human about the narrator seemingly floundering for appropriate terms–attempting to employ oversimplifying labels like “divorce” and “seduction.” One passage that really highlights this verbosity is: “Lacking the Karhidish ‘human pronoun’ used for persons in somer, I must say ‘he,’ for the same reasons as we used the masculine pronoun in referring to a transcendent god: it is less defined, less specific, than the neuter or the feminine.” The narrator compares the lack of a lexicon to her culture’s verbal approach to the abstract “transcendence” of god–a concept which humans have obviously been struggling to capture linguistically for ages.
This chapter articulates the challenges the narrator faces as a gendered human attempting to interact with an androgynous society. The narrator’s tendency is to use their own gendered lens to analyze a genderless society and present Gethenian sexuality from the point of view of an outsider encountering it for the first time, thus translating it for a similarly unfamiliar audience. However, it seems rather inappropriate to use this lens simply because it does not exist in this world and the narrator runs into the issue. “The pronoun (he) leads me to forget the Karhider I am with is a manwoman”(95). The gender lens seems to limit the terminology that could be used to describe the alien society. Oppong provides a grammatical suggestion (the male pronoun), which is used throughout the novel, and provides a warning as to show difficult it is, as a person with a gender, to adapt to a genderless society (and language). On Gethen, no one considers their gender, as it is the same for everybody. In contrast, visitors like the narrator want to be acknowledged as men or women (“I am a woman.. [96]), which they’ve been socialized to see as huge components of their identity and will have to learn to gender irrelevancy. The Karhider lives are different because their sexuality is vastly different. I think leguin may find human relationships and sexuality troublesome in the society that we have created. I don’t think she created genthians to make people think deeper about what sexuality could be but rather what we could be without it.
I agree with everyone below about how the narrator uses her own experiences as a reference point for the Gethenians. However, I think that in constantly observing the Gethenians with a human lens, she finds herself conflicted about the role of gender and sex in society. I don’t believe that this narrator preaches only positivity for the Gethenian circle of life, but when she does, it comes from the part of her that is tired of the oppression of women. This part of her can be characterized by these lines: “The fact that everyone… is liable to be ‘tied down to childbearing,’ implies that no one is quite so thoroughly ‘tied down’ here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be…” (93) and “Therefore nobody here is quite so free as a free male anywhere else” (94).
The other part of the narrator is the part of her that can’t imagine a human world without such clearly defined sexual and social roles for each gender. Prof. Newbury points to the intriguing lines “One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience” (95). Perhaps this statement of the narrator is an expression of how true equality, of how liberation can be paralyzing. Without social constructs to inform our behavior, every decision of ours must be our own, as a human being (instead of as a woman, as a queer person, as a person of a certain racial identity, etc.). While I don’t believe that this is a good enough reason to oppress women, I do understand the fear that is expressed in that statement. It reminds me of the Phyllis Schlafly sect of women in the 70’s who vehemently opposed the ERA, who cited fears of universal military conscription and loss of the “cushy lifestyles” of homemaking to lobby against their own equality being written into the Constitution.
LeGuin relies on her own experiences as a human and the sexual experiences she and the species she observes. She uses the sommer-Kemmer cycle to explain a more androgynous and more equal society. She is coping with people alien to her–the Gethenians–by creating a scientific baseline for their procreation. As Will said, the cycle makes these sexual activities less “sexual” or entirely sexless. LeGuin seemed to almost appreciate and envy the rules of divorce, where she described that in Osnoriner, there was no “remarriage after either divorce or the partner’s death: one can only vow kemmering once” (92). I thought this was interesting because it implies that you only have one “true love” or one mate for life; it makes the society and culture much more androgynous and equal. I believe some of her coping strategies are good because she appreciates these other cultures that are different from her own. When she asks the reader to consider: “There is no unconsenting sex, no rape. As with most mammals other than man, coitus can be performed only by mutual invitation and consent; otherwise, it is not possible. Seduction certainly is possible, but it must have to be awfully well-timed” (94). Although she appreciates this other culture, she is also making excuses for the wrongdoings of human kind and proposing a sexual utopia without strife and conflict. As Colin said, it could be viewed that she is sad about the way humans engage in sexual relationships and that she is just admiring other cultures with the hope that humans might be able to expand their sexuality. I appreciate Will’s point that at the end of the day, this could be a favorable situation with a world void of negative sexual encounters, divorce problems, relationships, etc. Still, it could also create a world that is void of passion and thus life. It is a fascinating story.
The narrator in “The Question of Sex” grounds herself in comparisons of sexuality and sexual practices between herself/her species, and the species she observes. Within these observations, we see some of what is considered acceptable and taboo in the context of human sexuality. She refers to group sex among the observed among the Genthians as “promiscuous” and notes that non-heterosexual practices among the species is so uncommon that it is simply ignored. The narrator only considers and expounds upon the heterosexual breeding practices of the Genthians, fixating on their androgyny and the scientific codification of windows for procreation. In doing so, I might argue that she projects and possibly critiques human standards of sexuality onto the Genthians. Additionally, the scientific approach to observing these practices makes them feel entirely sexless. In a way, I think that’s the point. The absence of rape, war, and passion/sexual-based aggression suggests that the removal of sex (or at least the relegation of sex to a singular window or “room”) from day-to-day life could create an androgynous utopia. At the same time, we know the dangers of utopian thinking. Perhaps this serves as both a positive and negative allegory of a sexless world, one void of violence, but one void of passion and life when sex becomes so codified.
LeGuin uses sexuality and gender dynamics to relate herself and humans more broadly to another intelligent life form. Her understanding of gender and sexuality is anchored by her experience as a human. To cope with this vastly different way of approaching sex she is constantly comparing their androgynous cycle to our own continuous sexual desires. However, instead of looking upon this sexuality with disgust as some humans definitely would, given the ambiguous nature of gender as compared to our own society, she finds positives to this way of life. The somer-kemmer cycle in her eyes makes a society more equal because everyone shares the same sexual cycle and the risks of conception, unlike our society. She also applauds the nonviolent nature of the Genthians that may be attributed to their biologically contained sex drive. I think that this strategy of finding the good things in another culture rather than jumping to the conclusion that their sexuality is less refined than ours just because it is different is a great way to relate to a vastly different group of beings. Instead of being eager to condemn the Genthians she is eager to learn more about their sexuality as it relates to culture. In my opinion, this probably would not be the case with many humans so the narrator is unique in this aspect. Finally, to take a step back I think that Leguin may feel excluded or have negative feelings towards the way humans form their relationships and sexuality and that is why she created the Genthians, to make people think deeper about the possibilities of what sexuality could be.